Hap­tik Ticks for Times In­ter­net

New Delhi: Mum­bai and San Fran­cisco-based per­sonal as­sis­tant app Hap­tik has raised an undis­closed sum in Se­ries-B fund­ing from Times In­ter­net. The money will be used for prod­uct devel­op­ment and to im­prove ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties and busi­ness op­er­a­tions, Times In­ter­net said in a state­ment.

“We started Hap­tik so that con­sumers could get the most out of their phones, with­out the huge learn­ing curve of nav­i­gat­ing hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent apps. Or­der­ing food or check­ing into a flight should be as easy as ask­ing for it,” Aakrit Vaish, the CEO of Hap­tik, was quoted as say­ing.

Times In­ter­net is the dig­i­tal arm of The Times Group, the pub­lisher of this news­pa­per. Founded in 2013 by Vaish and Swa­pan Ra­jdev, Hap­tik is a mo­bile-first ap­pli­ca­tion that en­ables users to get daily tasks done by chat­ting with as­sis­tants, a list that in­cludes on­line shop­ping, travel book­ings, food de­liv­ery, restau­rant reser­va­tions and get­ting in­for­ma­tion about the best mo­bile plan recharges.

“Hap­tik is part of a grow­ing glo-

bal trend to­wards chat-based com­merce. They have great affin­ity amongst their cur­rent users, and we hope to help them con­tinue to in­no­vate on the ser­vice, while ex­pand­ing their user base,” said Gau­tam Sinha, CEO of Times In­ter­net.

The startup, which claims to pro­cesses over half-a-mil­lion re­quests ev­ery month, and has been down­loaded by over 1-mil­lion users, works with some of the coun­try’s largest con­sumer in­ter­net com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Flip­kart, Clear­trip, Via.com and Ur­banClap.